The Andrech Samples
Riding the personnel transport belt up to the level of Rogul’s office, I wiped my hands down my thighs. I never had killed anyone before. Never had wanted to. Hell, I didn’t want to now. But since yesterday it had been sure. I wiped my hands again. Clammy, even though I had seen no one since entering the building. They all had gone, all had crowded to the heliports, all had been fed by aerial arteries into the residence blocks for the usual evening tele.
All except Rogul.
I stopped outside his office, wiped my palms nervously again; then I stepped forward to break the light beam. The tele-screen above glowed with the color image of Rogul, made familiar by two months of patient stalking and watching.
“Mr. Andrech?”
“That’s right.” I was amazed at the steadiness of my voice. “I hope I’m not too late...”
“Oh, no, no. I had a lot of work to catch up on. Come in please.”
I broke the second light beam and went through the opening door to his inner office. First time I’d been there, of course; wouldn’t do to have his secretarial robot able to identify me later.
Rogul was behind his desk, standing: a tall, gray-haired, well-conditioned man in his late forties. A self made man who had come up a dozen years before with a new design for mass transport of planetary settlers which had made him wealthy. We shook hands.
“So, Andrech. You claim to have developed cheap artificial atmospheres for small, low-gravity planets. Is that true?”
“I have.”
I’d needed a cover story, in case his secretary still had been switched on, or a business associate still had been present But we were alone. I seemed to see each second stretch out long and thin around us, thinner and thinner, until finally it snapped and fell away.
“I hope so, Andrech. Even if there is overlapping between your design and the encased bubble atmosphere, a workable new process would be worth a great deal of money.”
I went past him toward some abstract figurines on the window sill; I wanted him on his feet — with his back to me. I wasn’t sure I could do it if he were sitting, and I didn’t want to watch his face as the blade went in.
“These statues are... damned interesting.”
“Unique, aren’t they? The indigenous humanoids of Akaniam used to make them before...” His voice trailed off absently as he moved over beside me. “Seems a damned shame, actually.”
I picked up a figurine, and then set it down again. “Before what?”
“Before they were exterminated. We had to, of course; Akaniam’s close in, easy access.” His eyes momentarily were sad: large, intelligent eyes, with whites so clear they had a bluish tinge. “We needed the land for settlers. We always do.”
He turned from the window. Turned away from me.
Reflexes took over. My right arm flicked, the sleeve-knife slid its thin, razor-edged length from the plastic sheath strapped to my forearm. The same flow of movement swept the blade forward and into his kidney.
Rogul gave a hoarse cry of agony, his body arching back as it tried to contain the searing pain. My cupped left hand went over his shoulder to jerk his chin up and to the left as the knife pulled wetly free, slashing, then darted up in a lethal arc at his throat.
Bright arterial blood splashed across my fingers and jacket sleeve, making me jerk back as if it were scalding. The flaccid corpse collapsed on the tiles. It didn’t even twitch. Rogul was finally dead.
I leaned against a corner of the desk, panting, sweat searing my eyes and dripping on the polished plastic so my fingers dragged wet smeary marks across the surface. I had done it, just as Delia and I had rehearsed a thousand times in the months since making our decision.
After slumping there for an eternity of those elastic seconds, head down, breath whistling raggedly through my clenched teeth, I straightened up with something like a sob. Averting my gaze from the pathetic huddle of cloth and flesh which had been Rogul, I went to his private sink and washed my hands. I didn’t want to waste it all by drawing attention on the nearly deserted, post-rush helitrans home.
Delia knew the moment she saw me, with that instant rapport of people deeply in love; but she could say nothing because of the twelve other tenants with whom by regulation we shared a dwelling area. When we finally were in a bed cubicle with the beam switched on for privacy, she sank down slowly beside me on the edge of the bed.
“Poor darling. What have we done to each other? Killing...” Under the light synthetics of her pajamas, I could see the almost childish wings of her shoulder blades. She turned great tear-stained eyes at me. “Maybe we should just... stop—”
I stilled her words with my lips. This was the moment to be strong, I knew. I could feel her body heat through the pajamas. Her stomach still was flat but in that body, right now, was our child, embryonic yet, little more than a tiny heart pulsing in its warm dark bath of amniotic fluid, but ours. Yesterday’s tests had confirmed it.
“We’ve been over all this, Delia. We’re going through with it.” She drew a deep, shuddering breath. “So Mrs. Rogul too...”
“Not until tomorrow,” I whispered against her fragrant hair.
We spent the time afterwards, until lights-out, giggling over our attempts to find mutually acceptable names for the baby.
Neither Delia nor I were psychologically prepared for waiting: time to study, to plan, to foresee, also meant time to remember the hot sticky gush of life’s blood across my wrist, the broken cry of Rogul’s anguish. And waiting might give Mrs. Rogul time to begin wondering whether it had been more than a random killing. So I went after her the next night, almost blindly. As it turned out, my direct approach made it ridiculously simple.
Amelia Rogul was childless, of course, a few years younger than her husband had been. A modem woman who loved life, used it, spent it, and thus who needed no friends beside her for support in grief. This meant she was alone, since the Roguls, as wealthy people, had a separate dwelling unit, even the luxury of separate cooking facilities.
I broke the entryway light beam and waited, an idiotic look of sorrow on my face, a blank tape deck prominent in my hand. I felt no compunction. Perhaps I had been brutalized by the first killing; perhaps, instead, it just was knowing that success was one body nearer.
“What is it, please?”
She hadn’t illuminated, so I couldn’t see her in the tele-screen as she studied me; but no nerves trilled in her voice. Good.
“I have a message of condolence from your husband’s employees, Mrs. Rogul.” Then, in a stroke of genius, I added, “If you want me to leave it here in the hall—”
That made her break the inner beam, of course, and step to the door to reach for the tape. “No need of that. I’ll take it and—”
My hands came up to close about her throat. She made a sound like that of the great sea birds on tele’d historicals. The door had shut behind me; with the tele-screen blanked one-way, nobody passing in the hall could see us at all.
Even then I almost lost her. She brought a knee up, hard, just missing my manhood; I squinted and clawed my hands deeper into her throat. We went about it in an odd, clumsy, ritual dance. Her breath hissed in my face. Her hands flapped ineffectually against my steeled forearms, desperate fingers peeled skin from my forehead and shredded my jacket pocket. My own fingers were slimy with our mingled sweats.
Finally the movements lost volition. She became too heavy to support My hands let the inert body slide to the floor, then felt for a pulse at the base of her throat. None. Spittle-flecked lips drawn back in a canine snarl, and I was surprised by a moment of acute nausea: her eyes protruded far enough to be knocked off with a sweep of a hand.
The sickness passed. I checked the hall through the tele-screen, then went home to give Delia the news.